Method and system for providing an adaptive input user interface for data entry applications

A method of providing an optimized user input form including a plurality of input fields through web-based for display to a user, the method comprising:

• determining whether the input field is an alphanumeric character input field or a binary checkbox to define an input field type;
• determining whether the input field is filled with exclusively numeric, alphabetic, or binary symbol data to define a preferred datatype associated with the input field;
• determining whether the input field is virtually always filled in by a user to define a relative importance of the input field;
• determining a size of the field based on an average number of characters of the field as dictated by a historic average size to define a preferred input field size;
• adaptively modifying the size of the input field as displayed on the web page based on the preferred input field size;
• adaptively modifying a location of the input field on the form based on the relative importance of the input field;
• and
• constraining a datatype of the input field based on the preferred datatype.

An apparatus for adapting an online user input form providing user input to a web-based application, the apparatus comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• one or more stored sequences of instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to carry out the steps of:
• defining one or more attributes related to one or more fields of the online user input form;
• obtaining historical data comprising past user input to related user input forms;
• calculating historical most common entry values for each attribute of the one or more attributes;
• and
• modifying the one or more fields of the online user input form in accordance with the calculated historical average values.

A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions for adapting an online user input form providing user input to a web-based application, which instructions, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to carry out the steps of:

• defining one or more attributes related to one or more fields of the online user input form;
• obtaining historical data comprising past user input to related user input forms;
• calculating historical most common entry values for each attribute of the one or more attributes;
• and
• modifying the one or more fields of the online user input form in accordance with the calculated historical average values.